When the governing council of the American University of Nigeria (AUN), Yola in Adamawa State, led by former senator Ben Obi, appointed DyWane Preston Frazier as the new president of the school on March 27, 2023, it gave the impression that the recruitment exercise complied with Nigerian regulations, particularly the guidelines set by the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC).
However, the available information exclusively obtained by FIJ faults the process and demonstrates that Frazier possessed far lower that the minimum qualifications expected of a chief executive officer of any Nigerian university.
At AUN, an institution founded by former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, a CEO is known as president, an American model that is equivalent to the British-styled vice chancellorhip system in Nigeria.
NUC GUIDELINES
“There shall be appointed for every private university, a Vice-Chancellor who shall be a Professor,” says the Code of Governance for Private Universities in Nigeria in paragraph 10.3.1.
In addition to being a professor, a vice chancellor is someone with a track record of peer-reviewed academic publications in local and international journals as well as proven human management experience.
Frazier appears to have almost no known history of academic publications in journals. Until his appointment, the only peer-reviewed articles published to his credit were his PhD. thesis published in March 2005 and one 2015 co-authored research.
The publications are: PhD. thesis titled ‘Job Satisfaction of International Educators‘, published in March 2005 and available on Researchgate, and ‘Evolution of Automatic Ordering System in Retail Market: Analyzing Inventory Data‘, published in 2015 and available on Google School.
In October 2024, 22 months after his appointment, he published his second co-authored research titled ‘Frugal Innovation and Entrepreneurial University: A Case Study of African First Development University in Africa‘. Theoneste Manishimwe and Hassan Yusuf were his co-authors. Curiously, they were AUN staff.
Aside from the publications above, most of the 39 other article titles, including conference presentations, referenced in his resume available on the school’s website (archived here) were unpublished. In the academic world, published articles have greater ratings for ascending career ladders and contributing to knowledge distribution. But unpublished ones have far lesser recognition with no realistic potential to drive knowledge advancement.
“Not being a full professor, one wonders why the university’s governing council considered it necessary to appoint him in violation of the NUC’s code of governance,”
Nigerians who migrate to the United States in search of professional job opportunities are usually required to take examinations and certifications to qualify them for employment in the country. But in Nigeria, the reverse is the case and clear regulatory guidelines are disregarded to foist incompetent people on critical institutions.”
Even if he was ever a ‘professor’ in the USA, the source contended, his research articles were not enough to qualify him to become a professor and lead any Nigerian university.
“The possession of requisite publications is a universal criterion for promotion to the rank of professor and associate professor in universities,” said the source.
“If it can be assumed that he was an associate professor [equivalent to a reader in the Nigeria] in the USA, the number of academic articles authored or co-authored by him, which were two in total as of his appointment date, cannot qualify him to be conferred with professorship and appointed a vice chancellor in Nigeria under the NUC regulations.
“Where the word ‘shall’ is used in a regulatory instrument, compliance is not discretionary but mandatory. So the issue here is that Frazier was not conferred with the rank of professor anywhere before being appointed a vice chancellor in Nigeria.
“Again, assuming that he was conferred with professorship anywhere before becoming a vice chancellor in Nigeria, his academic publications have not met the standards for the conferment of professorships in Nigeria. The NUC prohibits the grant of professorships on mere length of years of teaching.
“So does the NUC apply lower standards to foreigners employed in the Nigerian university system? And does the United States also apply lower standards to employ Nigerians in its University system? We do not think that there is any academic in Nigeria or anywhere in the world who was promoted to the rank of professor with only two co-authored publications.”
FRAZIER’S PREVIOUS ROLES
Frazier is an American national who had held various academic positions in the United States until his latest appointment in Nigeria.
His publicly available work history straddles two institutions. He graduated from Campbellsville University (CU) in 1998 and worked there between 2005 and 2007 as an assistant professor of international studies. He was then posted as a senior vice president for international programmes at Upper Iowa University (UIU) in Fayette, Iowa, where he worked for three years.
Writing about him, the IWC said, “Frazier comes from Campbellsville University in Campbellsville, Ky., where from 2005 to the present he has worked as an associate vice president of academic affairs, dean of the graduate school and associate professor of international studies.”
In the American setting, that ranking system for academics starts from assistant professor to associate professor and professor.
That system is completely different in Nigeria. Academics are promoted from lecturer (assistant lecturer, lecturer II, and lecturer I) to senior lecturer to reader to professor, according to Abdelghaffar Amoka, a professor of physics at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
“The criteria to become an associate professor in the American system are lower than the criteria to become a reader in the British system,” Amoka said in a Facebook post on August 29, 2024.
In 2010, Frazier returned to CU as an associate vice president for academic affairs. In 2015, he took up a new job at the Iowa Wesleyan College (IWC) as provost. During his tenure, the 181-year-old private university ran into a significant financial crisis and publicised its permanent closure on March 28, 2023.
The shutdown announcement and his appointment date by AUN were just a day apart. In his profile, Frazier boasts of strategically increasing the defunct school’s enrolment but did not mention how the school lost its fiscal viability under his leadership.
FRAZIER FAILED TO RESPOND TO QUESTIONS
Before press time, Frazier had not responded to seven questions FIJ sent to him on May 6. He acknowledged the text, promising to respond “in the next few days”.
“This is something perpetrated by dishonest people at the university. But nevertheless, we will contact you in the next few days. I am disappointed that a journalist of your caliber is not vetting your source who messaged you to start,” Frazier wrote in response to FIJ’s text seeking answers to the questions.
Reminders were sent to him on May 7 and on Monday. When he responded on Monday, he said he “was a full professor”. Again, he promised to respond “soon”.
“I am obviously a full professor and have contracts to prove it. You can’t be a provost without it. But we will respond soon as it’s graduation week and that is the hardest tie of the year,” he said.
The sixth president of AUN failed to respond to a follow-up text asking him to be specific about his response time.
Source: fij
